As a parent, the only thing I am absolutely certain of is my own fallibility.

Why is it that loving something provides such little protection from betrayal?

With prodigious bravery and eviscerating humor, Roxane Gay takes on culture and politics in Bad Feminist-and gets it right, time and time again. We should all be lucky enough to be such a bad feminist.

Let's all commit ourselves to the basic civility of minding our own business. Failing that, let's go back to a time when we were nasty and judgmental, but only behind one another's backs.

I’ve sometimes thought that it’s only by recalling that desperate devotion my kids once felt for me that I can maintain my own desperate devotion in the face of their adolescent sneering.

If God were like a Star Wars Force linking all consciousness, I supposed I could maybe believe that. But let's just say I'm not going to be running off to India to join an ashram anytime soon.

For a couple of months there I was shrieking like a banshee.